Conference to feature Miss Hmong America, other speakers

The event will be held from 6 to 9
p.m. Friday and 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday in the Great Hall of the Memorial
Student Center. Admission, including lunch on Saturday, is free. The themeis Adaptive Leadership: Changing it Up.

About 200 people are expected to
attend.

The keynote speaker Friday night
will be Lee Pao Xiong, director of the Center for Hmong Studies at Concordia
University in St. Paul, at 6:30 p.m. The keynote speaker Saturday will be Amy
Hang, policy coordinator for the office of Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton, at 10:30
a.m.

Workshops will be held both days.
Der Yang, Miss Hmong America 2013, will be one of the speakers. Others include
Mai H. Vang, special assistant to the chancellor for Equity and Affirmative
Action at UW-Stevens Point; Dang Yang, multicultural recruitment
coordinator in the School of Education at UW-Stout; Scot
Vaver, an instructor in the business department at UW-Stout; and Mary McManus,
assistant director of the Memorial Student Center at UW-Stout.

Hmong singers and dancers will
perform from 2 to 3 p.m. Saturday.

The event is sponsored and
organized by the Hmong Stout Student Organization, with about 20 members of
HSSO volunteering. The event director is Sheenab Her, HSSO vice president.

"The goal for
the conference is to educate and promote the Hmong culture to the public and to
the campus," said Her, a food science major from Wausau.